A PLANNED high-speed rail line between London and Birmingham is being scrapped.

A PLANNED high-speed rail line between London and Birmingham is being scrapped.

The #30 billion service would have run at 225mph, cutting journey times to less than an hour.

A pledge to consider the scheme was included in Labour's General Election manifesto last year, but an inquiry by Sir Rod Eddington, former British Airways chief executive, has decided that it was too expensive.

The high speed line, in the planning stages since 2001, would have carried 21.1 million passengers by 2016.

It would have run from London to Birmingham and Manchester, and on to Edinburgh or Glasgow and linked to the Eurostar service to Belgium and France.

Sir Rod will call for "fast and frequent" services between cities to improving their economic performance.

James Cooper, policy adviser at Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, said: "There needs to be a viable alternative to a motorway.

"Tolls without that alternative do not reduce congestion, they simply add to costs. A high speed rail link would appear the perfect solution.

"We would like to see details of how the Government intends to achieve the modal shift from road to rail which it says it wants without a high speed rail line."

MP Lynne Jones (Lab, Selly Oak) said a high-speed link would help the environment.

"We need to discourage people from flying to Europe when they could go by train, and there are MPs who fly between London and the north."

Coun Gary Clarke, chairman of the Passenger Transport Authority, said it was essential to improve rail services.